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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8263397" data-attributes="member: 42582">Campbell's posts here spoke quite strongly to me.I think that by Campbell's standards I am probably not a strict referee in my adjudication of fictional positioning, I have felt this particularly in my GMIng of Cortex+ Heroic - I think I may have begun with too relaxed an approach and then it becomes hard to tighten it up. In Traveller I think I've done a better job - perhaps because the system encourages a bit more of the traditional allocation of roles/responsibilities to players and referee as participants. My Burning Wheel GM is good in this respect (ie strict on fictional positioning)!I agree that authorship - by which I think [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] means directly deciding outcomes rather than relying on the resolution processes - defuses tension and makes things easier. This is why I like the BW approach of having Circles and Wises checks be standard action resolution: the player gets to put forward a "suggestion" but if it matters (if there are genuine stakes relative to the PC's agenda) then a difficulty is set and the check is resolved and the player can learn that things are different from how s/he would have hoped them to be.I'm not 100% sure what is meant be inhabiting the story (cf inhabitation of one's character) but I think forcing things through the process of action resolution is a way of making the situation more vivid from the in-character perspective. I don't play much (cf GMing) but again am reminded of my BW game where the GM was trying to force me into a duel of wits with my mother - in which she would try and persuade me to give up my errantry and stay with her on our estate - and I sidestepped by praying to lift the burdens from her. When the dice for prayer were being rolled my heart was in my mouth. If it had failed I would have felt a little bit broken, like my character!EDIT on this point: most of the prep for this had been done by me, as part of my PC building. The GM didn't have to do much in advance. What he did have to do - and what he did - was to bring my prep to bear on me via my character.If "heroic" means something in the neighbourhood of "power fantasy" then I would agree. But I think it is compatible with playing a character who feels like someone committed to heroic goals. Complications don't need to be narrated in such a way as to present the character as a loser, or the universe as fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to him/her.</blockquote>

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